A bipartisan budget deal to avert another government shutdown comes before the Senate this week. The vast majority of House members from both parties approved the two-year budget agreement last week in a 332-to-94 vote. It is being hailed as a breakthrough compromise for Democrats and Republicans. The bill eases across-the-board spending cuts, replacing them with new airline fees and cuts to federal pensions. In a concession by Democrats, it...

By Amy Goodman with Denis MoynihanThe holiday season is upon us. Sadly, the big retailers are Scrooges when it comes to paying their staffs. Undergirding the sale prices is an army of workers earning the minimum wage or a fraction above it, living check to check on their meager pay and benefits. The dark secret that the retail giants like Wal-Mart don’t want you to know is that many of these workers subsist below the poverty line, and rely on...

Fast-food workers are walking off the job in about 100 cities today in what organizers call their largest action to date. Today’s strikes and protests continue a campaign that began last year to call for a living wage of $15 an hour and the right to form a union without retaliation. Early this morning, Democracy Now!'s Amy Goodman and Hany Massoud headed to Times Square in New York City where a group of McDonald's workers were...

As fast-food workers stage a one-day strike, a new report exposes how the industry’s CEOs have not just saved money by paying workers low wages, but have used the government to subsidize their own million-dollar salaries with taxpayer dollars. That is because a loophole in the tax code lets companies deduct the costs of performance-based executive pay. We are joined by Sarah Anderson, director of the Global Economy Project at the...

Could the United States face another economic collapse? Writer and broadcaster Thom Hartmann looks back at past financial crises and comes to a startling conclusion. "As long as you don’t look too closely at our nation, things seem under control — the United States looks whole … but when you go around to the 'dark back side' of the nation, you see the shocking truth. There you see a nation whose core fundamentals have...

Tune in Tuesday when we’ll speak with Thom Hartmann Program about his new book, "The Crash of 2016: The Plot to Destroy America—and What We Can Do to Stop It." Read an excerpt from the introduction now.

Election Day was held Tuesday, deciding state and local races across the country. In Virginia, former Democratic National Committee Chair Terry McAuliffe was elected governor, defeating tea party-backed Ken Cuccinelli, the state’s attorney general. McAulliffe’s victory was seen as a rebuke of the tea party-backed government shutdown that impacted many of the state’s workers. In New Jersey, Republican Gov. Chris Christie...

In part two of our interview with financial analyst and writer Yves Smith, we look at who wins and losses with the JPMorgan Chase settlement. While the New York Post accused the Obama administration of "robbing" JPMorgan, Smith breaks down how much the nation’s largest bank will actually have to pay. [includes rush transcript]

In the largest banking settlement in U.S. history, the banking giant JPMorgan Chase is set to pay a record $13 billion fine to settle investigations into its mortgage-backed securities. Five years ago, the bank’s risky behavior helped trigger the financial meltdown, including manipulating mortgages and sending millions of Americans into bankruptcy or foreclosure. JPMorgan’s preliminary settlement with the U.S. government may end up...

New research shows more than half of low-wage workers at fast-food restaurants rely on public assistance to survive – a rate double that of the overall workforce. According to researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, low wages in the fast-food industry cost American taxpayers nearly $7 billion every year – that’s more than the entire annual budget of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. A companion report by the...